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A link post is a type of post common on many blogs, including here at 40Tech, where the post links to a story on another site. The purpose of a link post is to say to the reader, “Hey, here’s a good story.” Often the post adds a few words of commentary. The post on sharing your WiFi credentials with a QR code was an example of a link post.

I’ve recently come up with an easy way create a link post on 40Tech using Ulysses and the Workflow app on iOS. I copy the author’s name to the clipboard, select the text I want to quote, and run the workflow via Safari’s share sheet. The workflow prompts me for the name of the other site, before opening Ulysses with my post almost all ready to go. All that’s left for me to do in Ulysses is add some comments, pick my tags and categories, and publish the post.

Behind the Scenes

Here’s what happens, mostly behind the scenes, in the Workflow app:

1. After Workflow asks me to type the name of the publication, it sets it as a variable;
2. Workflow gets the clipboard contents (which should be the author’s name, if you copied the name to your clipboard as I explained above), changes it to title case in the event that it isn’t properly capitalized, and sets it as a variable;
3. Workflow gets the URL from the Safari web page, as well as the text I selected on the page;
4. Workflow puts together the pieces and creates the text for the post; and
5. Workflow opens Ulysses with the text as a new sheet.

In the first part of step 4, above, Workflow creates a header tag (#) followed by the name of the story as a clickable link. That’s because Ulysses will take the URL that follows a header tag in the first line and add it as a “linked_list_url” custom field on my WordPress blog. That’s what makes the title of my link posts clickable, and sends you to the other site when you click the title.

Here is a screenshot of the entire workflow:

Here is a link to download the complete workflow in the Workflow directory. I realize the final two steps could probably be redone using a “New Ulysses Sheet” action, but this is working so I’m not messing with it. If you are going to use the workflow yourself, you’ll need to change the path at the end of the second-to-last step to point to a group that already exists in your Ulysses setup (mine points to 40Tech > Linked).

My link post workflow on iOS is now almost as efficient as it is on Mac. More on my Mac workflow soon.